A competitive, efficient, reliable and above all sustainable freight transport system can be achieved through intermodal and co-modal.

Where road and rail will compete as well as complement, thereby increasing capacity. Reducing the number of accidents involving citizens and also improving their quality of life through a better environment.

As a comprehensive solution, it's essential to look at door-to-door scenarios including urban freight and last mile issues. The research activities of the Rail Freight and Logistics Group have been focusing on a number of specialised areas:

• intermodal rail freight and rail operations issues
• innovative rail freight vehicle concepts
• port centric logistics
• telematic control and monitoring of freight
• regulatory framework relating to freight and urban freight issues

Rail Freight and Logistics (RFAL) is currently involved as a partner in the following EU funded projects:

• NOVELOG
• CAPITAL

RFAL also coordinated the three recently completed EU funded projects:

• CAPACITY4RAIL
• SPECTRUM
• Smartfusion

RFAL has participated in many successfully completed EU funded projects. These include; online logistics benchmarking tools and an intermodal route finder, eFreight issues and an internet platform for cargo. Also best practices in road, rail and urban freight solutions.

Our work encompasses rail, urban logistics, green corridors and clean vehicles. We research the implications of the European Commission's aims to increase rail freight capacity and encourage sustainable distribution.

Our research focuses on a number of specialised areas, including the fast-growing sustainability agenda for cities of the future.

Final Novelog newsletter

We are pleased to present in our final issue, our latest achievements, and also to highlight some upcoming Urban Freight events that I am sure you do not want to miss!

Over the past three years, NOVELOG partners cooperated strongly with a community of related parties involved in multi-stakeholder platforms in twelve cities
around Europe. Together, they invested time and efforts and gained insights into urban freight transport problems analysis and cooperative solutions development. They are now able to provide guidance to European metropolitan cities on how to implement effective and sustainable city logistics policies and measures. 

The knowledge gained through this process allowed us to identify specific policy, planning and regulation actions that could help cities achieve higher level of efficiency in their urban freight transportation systems. Furthermore, in parallel to the development and implementation of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans, the NOVELOG project emphasizes the need for concrete guidelines on the distribution of goods inside the urban environment. Therefore, one of the final NOVELOG outcomes is a detailed City's Guide on how to develop and implement a Sustainable Urban Logistics Plan.

As you already know, we consider collaboration quite fundamental! So, we am happy to present in the following pages, the main outcomes of our successful joint CIVITAS Urban Freight Conference with three other European Projects (CITY-LAB, SUCCESS, U-TURN) which was held in Brussels in April. You will also read about the insights gained during the session on "Urban freight" organized in the framework of the SUMP Conference which was held in Cyprus. Last but not least, stay tuned as the cooperation between the EU and the US will continue after the completion of the project.

You can find all this and more in this newsletter. Before closing the editorial of this final NOVELOG newsletter, we would like to thank you all for having supported our activities, contributed to our work or simply followed our project over the last three years!

The newsletter can be downloaded here.

We wish you a pleasant read!